


Into the Calm and the Quiet

by chewysugar



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Autumn, Broken Dean Winchester, Dean is eighteen, Fae & Fairies, Family Issues, Fights, Forests, Gen, Hearing Voices, Horror, Insanity, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Scary, Spooky, Teenagers, Teenchesters, Tragedy, Young Sam Winchester, fall - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 13:29:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15819831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chewysugar/pseuds/chewysugar
Summary: One final fight pushes Dean to run into the woods. But he's not alone in there, and what he finds could be his salvation and also his doom.





	Into the Calm and the Quiet

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this in my afternoon commute gave me a panic attack. Not that I think it's anything to sneeze at in terms of scariness, but just be warned: it isn't my usual offering of either smut of fluff.

Another day; another shouting match; another attempt to hurt the other to see if the other one feels. It'll be that way forever. Dean knows it to be true. The tragedy isn’t just that the two people he’d have walked naked to hell for hate each other, but that they’ve scarred each other so much the chance of ever truly reconciling is almost laughable. Even if years pass, Dad and Sam will carry these hurts between them. They’ll be distant, both too proud to admit to being in the wrong.

He’s tried to drown it out time and time again. But Dad’s voice is too deep with command; and Sammy is too filled with rancor and resentment. No matter where they go, it seems as if the bitter acrimony seeps into every piece of threadbare furniture and ugly wallpaper. Even Baby, what with her warm leather seats and familiar refuge, carries the pain of being a witness to the ever waging war.

If Baby was a vessel for all the screaming and fighting, Dean doesn't want to know what the state of his inner being looks like. Scarred worse than his body, certainly.

Today, after hearing them through even the tiles of the bathroom, he’s had enough. He storms through the shithole living room, bangs the shithole door open and walks out of the shithole bungalow. It’s piercing cold outside, the first real day of oncoming October slapping all those in this part of the country right across the face. He’s only got a thin, third-hand red sweater and his jeans on. The wind bending the tall, tall trees is so intense that Dean can fell it through his pants—a literal and proverbial shot to the nutsack. But he doesn’t give a damn, nor does he give a damn that Dad and Sammy have stopped shouting at each other and are calling out to him.

Something else is pulling him onwards—a call from without and within. His spirit is telling him to get as far away from it all as he humanly can: leave Dad and Sam and motels and even that stupid beastly bitch of a car behind to find something new; something genteel and normal. And out there, in the woods of red and orange and yellow leaves, Nature itself seems to be singing to him: _come to me, little lost prince; come to me, I’ll set you free._

_Free_ , Dean thinks as he crunches through the underbrush. _God, please let me be free_. He doesn’t even believe in God. How could he when all he’s seen since the age of four is hellfire and nightmares?

The wild, wild wind and the hammering of his heart in his eardrums has long drowned out whatever sounds were coming from the motel. Below, dead, dry lives snap and crack under his socked feet like breaking bones. He doesn’t care that he’s cold, or that he’s too old at eighteen to be having such an epic hissy fit. He can’t take it anymore, any of it: the shouts, the closed spaces, the demons and monsters. And so he continues to plunge headlong into the forest, where no path has ever been built by man or animal. Almighty and ever-seeing, the woods watch him, curious at the sight of such a foolhardy young man.

_Lost_ , Dean thinks furiously. _Lose me. Eat me. Take me away..._

_Come to me little soldier_ , sings the living autumn all around him. _I will hold you forever and never forsake you..._

_Never let me go_. It’s as though he’s talking to it now—whatever _it_ , with it’s sweet, seductive song is. Even when he can’t hear the melody in his mind, he needs only look at the swaying oaks and maples—at the ancient barks and twisted, bare bushes—to hear the response. Coldness embraces his skin, soothing his weary muscles with a touch almost like a lover.

On and on he journeys. The wild kingdom of dying leaves swallows him whole; blindly, he steps over gullies and little streams; the wind pushes him along, deeper into this new home where nothing can hurt or hinder him.

_Home to me_ , sings the forest. _Home with me; here in my arms I’ll hold you._

_Yes_ , Dean thinks. He missteps near the edge of a small hill, and finds himself tumbling like a carefree little boy down—down into a secluded meadow. Not hurt or even winded, he lays in his back and looks up at the canopy of beseeching branches over his head. He must have been walking for a longer time than he thought; the sky overhead is tinged with the orange of the setting sun; thick clouds pile on top of one another, all billowing and peering down briefly into the wood, as though confused as to what this poor, pitiful boy is doing so deep in desolation.

Below the ground is hard and cold, but Dean has slept on worse. At least here he’s on something natural—something that has been and will continue to be long before and after he’s done with this stupid war called life. The scent of decay fills his nose like the cologne of a man: of damp leaves and frozen earth; of sickly sweet rotting wild apples, and crisp, winding water.

He’s never been one to think deeply in front of others. It’s easier to be the careless, smart-talking, sex-crazed literal son of a bastard than to let anyone know that, yes, Dean Winchester does think and feel to the fleshy, sensitive core of his being. But he’s not out there in the real world right now—he’s here, in this chilled place that is simultaneously living and dying. It isn’t even quiet because Dean can’t stand the quiet; it gives him too much time to listen to his own thoughts: it's insistently busy, with the breeze making the branches creak and groan, and the leaves rustling and dancing all around. 

_It smells like a man_ , is one of the things he thinks clearly. He sits up on his elbows, and looks around at the seclusion. People always think of Nature as a woman, which has to be true because only women can give life and bleed for their creations. But if Nature is a woman, then the seasons have to be a Man; kind and giving in the spring, lavishing light and intensity in the summer, and then cold in the autumn and winter; taking away the flowers and the sunlight and exchanging them for dead things and unforgiving chill. And there’s that smell too—far too harsh and insistent to be anything feminine.

_This is your father_ , Dean thinks. Then he laughs. At least this father has something good about him; at least this father makes the death of the world look beautiful. His own father makes death messy and mechanical. He makes _life_ messy and mechanical too, now that Dean thinks about it. There isn’t a comely thing about John Winchester; he smells always of old leather, beer-soaked sweat and gun oil. Father Autumn, meanwhile, smells like soil and winter wind. John is gruff like an engine; the woods are silent save the ambient wind, and that ever present humming tune.

_Stay, dear boy. Dear, darling boy with the broken and battered heart. A heart like the woods, beautiful and treacherous and loving_...

“I’ll stay.” He speaks the words aloud, the sound of his own voice appalling in the serenity of the woods. It's as though he's made a bond out of those simply two syllables. He feels so deep within his heart. It doesn't frighten him; it pulls at that missing piece of his heart that wants to be filled--wants to belong--wants to be loved.

A tremor runs through the canopy; the leaves bend, looking at him with incredulous disbelief. The breeze laughs, almost in victory, racing around the meadow and stirring up the beds of fallen leaves as if to shout “I told you so! I told you he would stay.” It loves him, this forest--and so does the thing calling to him from within. He's tethered to it, like the roots of trees and the wildflowers are tethered to the ground. Water and life runs through them; and decay and cold runs from the woods into Dean, making them one. He can feel the beautiful rot and the oncoming slumber that all the wild, growing things are settling into. They're somewhere safe and dark--which is exactly where he wants to be.

Dean feels a sudden intrusion; he’s not alone here. And this time it isn’t an awareness that everything in this red and rusty wood is living as it dies. It’s the instinctive human response of something having set foot into his domain.

But the woods aren’t his. They belong to the woods—or to Nature, or autumn.

Confused, he gets to his feet. Why the hell is he wondering who the woods belong to when they’ve always just been a thing that’s been?

_To me, sweet thing_ , sings the sudden voice among the bark and the branches. _They belong to me, and you do too. To me, to me, who has never caused you harm!_

He should be scared. He should be angry or rebelling. None of this is true. He isn’t beholden to anyone except Sammy. And even though he wants to belong to someone just once—

_Sam doesn’t care_ , a brutal thought whispers. It has to be Dean who conjured it up because the song in the silence doesn’t know Sam’s name. All it knows is him. All it cares about is him.

_Follow me_ , the wind whispers. It pushes against his back. He walks, suddenly coltish in legs that have always been strong. Again, there in the underbrush of his rational thoughts, he knows that this isn’t the right thing to do. He should be running away, not towards. But what’s back there aside from shouts and blows and beastly things out of a dark, dark place?

A noise breaks the sanctuary. Dean is already across the meadow and scrambling up the opposite hill to get away. Whatever it is that’s invaded this place that found him, it’s going to take him away.

_To me, to me!_

“Yes,” Dean says under his breath. “Yes, I’m coming!”

_Come to me, brave and broken thing. Together we’ll dance and together will sing_.

He reaches the tree line, thicker and darker then it was on the other side of the meadow. That sense of something other closes in, making utter terror seize his guts.

_Leave me alone_ , he thinks as he pauses to catch his breath. _Get away from me._

It sounds as if a giant is crashing through the woods in behind. Every snap of a twig and breaking of a branch makes Dean twitch in sympathetic pain.

_They can’t hurt you when you’re with me. Come to me, listen to my voice..._

Dean finds courage in the wings of the cold, dying wind. He grabs it, holding it close to his heart.

_Away_ , he thinks, _get away!_

“Dean!” Someone with a voice as rough as thunder shouts his name. His ears throb. Before him the trees are taller and denser, the leaves speckled with bloody reds and bruised browns.

_To me..._

_Yes...to you._ He’ll find it in the thicket, in the wild, whispering woods.

“Dean, wait! Please!” Another shout, a younger, more beseeching cry. It gives Dean pause as he breaks the barrier between the old forest and the ancient one. Something protective stirs in him again and then, like a dead leaf, falls away.

_He doesn’t care. He only cares about himself. They only care about themselves._

_Come to me._

“Leave me alone!” And he doesn’t know who he screams it to. He just wants something to let him be and let him be free.

Frantic shouts—like animals, hunting him. The smaller beast sounds like it’s crying. Too much noise, he needs the song back. Desperate, he runs through the ocean of trees and shadows, feeling the fall all around him. What hunts him is hot on his heels, not caring that this place—this sanctuary—is just for him.

_Closer, closer, you’ll find me soon._

“Dean—oh god, Dean turn around!”

Why does the older hunter know his name? Why does he care now? He should have cared before the autumn woods called Dean away.

_So close my brave little prince; so close and you’ll be with me..._

Laughter and wind and heartbeats and shouts. The song is still there, leading him on like a memory. It’s getting darker and darker, and Dean feels as if he’s safe here in the heart of something beyond the earthly woods.

Perception slides into focus. He finds himself surrounded by alder trees: tall, vast with bark dappled white and silver like the body of something long deceased. Shadows fill the woods as the sun finally vanishes with one last doleful look at the world below.

There’s something primeval here, something more ancient than anything the family Winchester has ever encountered. Dean can feel it; it’s the source of the singing, the master of the autumn wood; it’s power is greater than comprehension.

Crashing feet; loud voices. They’re getting closer—too close to him and this sacred space. They’ll be on him in moments, and then they’ll drag him away to familiar turmoil and comfortable drudgery.

One of the tall, towering alder trees turn around and bends low. It’s a king now, a majestic, rake-thin lord of all forests and magician of the autumn winds. He’s garbed in the shadows of dusk; his face is white as a winter moon. Limbs like branches grow from beyond the folds of his coal-black garment.

He stoops, face inches from Dean’s. And again the song rings, this time indistinct despite proximity. Children’s laughter rings in Dean’s ears; the wind screams around him, but he does not move, too lured by the face of the lordly being before him. There’s no room for fear within him; only a sense of comfort from being here in the land of this gentle master.

“DEAN!”

Two voices scream from behind him. Something mechanical clicks. Dim memories swirl in Dean’s dreamy mind. He knows that sound—knows that it precedes a thunderous blast and a stinging bit of metal. The hunter is going to try and trap him. He’s going to kill the king of the alder trees.

Still near his real savior, Dean turns, wanting to see if the man will succeed in his endeavor the way he has in the past.

One last glimpse; one final sight of the being called Father, his face pale, his eyes wide as he holds his mighty shotgun. One last glance into the terrified, teary gaze of his little brother…his little brother crying for him, wanting him to come home…

Dean opens his mouth recognizing Sam in the chaos.

Then the king seizes his shoulders with his long-fingered, bone-white fingers. The shotgun blast adds to the hurly-burly crescendo of the wild, autumn woods.

The bullet hits the thin air into which Dean and the blank-faced king vanished.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you think!


End file.
